


Neptune

by Rhinocio



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 07:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16445804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinocio/pseuds/Rhinocio
Summary: There's probably an Altean proverb about flood waters building up one drop at a time. If so, Pidge has successfully kept a dam around their heart for years, and it's holding back an ocean of longing. If so, Hunk's found the weak point and stabbed.





	Neptune

They catch it in Hunk’s eyes from across the room, on a dim evening in the Garrison lab they’ve claimed as their own, and know immediately what they’re seeing. They know that the furtive glances aren’t his usual kind of curious, they know that there’s something else besides the lamplight flickering there. It’s the first time his presence has felt like an invasion. Shocked electricity stutters their pulse, and heaviness fills their chest as the dread grows a name. Like a gardener facing their hard-won bounty with a lawn mower, they decisively pump the gas and destroy what’s taken root. They’ve watched enough idiots fall in love.

“Don’t do that,” they say, words flat and hard, and nearly knock over their computer as they leave. It’s the best Pidge can do, given the sudden blindside. Sentiments well up like a vicious case of the hiccups and choke them, overwhelming the common sense they were so sure they had in spades. Unwelcome fond thoughts spill out from the gyri of their brain every moment they let go of the vigilant stranglehold they’ve been mentally gripping for years, fortified with validation.

It feels like drowning.

Hunk tries to be placating, in his way, with gifts and gestures and respectful distance. They dodge around the bundles of peanut butter cookies left at their door as if they were bombs. They pretend not to notice the crushed expressions when they turn away from his smiles. They walk in the opposite direction of his offered high-fives and laughter, leaving every hopeful glance behind so it can’t seed anything stronger. This isn’t the first time they’ve been at odds, but never has the subject matter been so intense. Programming codes and battle tactics have taken their lives into account but never their secrets, and Pidge would sooner EVA straight into the ion fire of a Galran battleship than explain why their denial has to be this forced. 

Ignoring Hunk, of course, means rejecting the main person they allow into their personal bubble, and by proxy of their tight-knit relationships, it means now every other companion in their life is hesitant around them. Their time spent at the Garrison becomes clinical and lonely, and they log longer hours than ever, trying to fill the emptiness with tangible mathematic successes. Pidge’s plan to stay with their parents falls flat the moment their father asks if everything is okay between them and their closest friend. Stress-induced insomnia makes the shadows in their private dorm room stretch long and menacing. After a week, they start crashing in the cockpit of the green lion, where metallic purring lulls them through fits of sleep.

The long nights make it much too easy to categorize all the parts of Hunk they’ve paid far too much attention to over the years. He hasn’t opened their internal Pandora’s Box so much as shoved it into their overly-inquisitive hands, and Pidge feels like they’re going mad ignoring the want to disassemble it. When they do dream, they’re resting on his shoulder, breathing cold desert air after a long day reconfiguring the machinery on top of the Garrison, and his hand is twined in theirs. Each time they startle awake, their foggy brain goes warm and stupid on the false memory. When they roll their aching neck and wander out for coffee at sunrise, their throat feels thick with yearning.

They know things are bad when Keith comes to talk to them. It’s almost funny that it’s him, given the absurdities his own romantics have put the rest of the team through. He wanders into the hangar like a man floating through the stars, purposeless and silent. He’s unobtrusive, and doesn’t force the conversation so much as stand too long in the crackling energy of their frazzled nerves, acting as a conductor. Pidge acknowledges him with the bare minimum of appropriate conduct and pretends they’re doing something important behind their lion’s ear, keeping their face buried like a child hiding from punishment. They know things are downright abysmal because he doesn’t play formal and tell them they need to think about Voltron, or that their miscommunication is breaking up the team, but instead goes right to the point.

“You hurt Hunk,” he says, in what sounds like both a concerned statement and a question of betrayal. There’s a sadness on his face that’s drastically unguarded compared to the Keith he was when they met, and for that reason alone his interrogation is powerful in ways he’ll never understand. Pidge doesn’t climb out from their hiding spot, and gives him the same fake excuses they’ve given everyone else. Both of them know it’s horseshit. He doesn’t push them. The silence grows stale and awkward, so he leaves with a reminder: “He’s worried about you. We all are.”

Pidge presses their face to their lion’s cold skin and momentarily loathes all these sweet, soft boys they call a family, who worry so wholeheartedly about each other and about them that their Green Paladin can’t even hate themself in peace.

They realize that there’s an end to this predicament, hope it’s the simplest one, and hates that they know it won’t be. Whether they give up running away or become immobilized with anxiety is a moot point – Hunk finally corners them in the same place things started, as a hesitant backlit shadow in the doorway of their lab, twiddling his thumbs and asking quietly if they can talk. His voice is soft and unaccusing, and Pidge abhors it. The crushing pressure of expectation fills the room and sprawls across their shoulders. They wait like a deer frozen in the headlights of a semitruck for the impact that ends everything, and it never comes.

Because the earth is as much hard stone and sheer drops as it is tiny, persistent sprouts, hopeful and determined despite their thin skeletons and flimsy shells, and Hunk is as much a tender boy as he is the intimidating mountain of a man Pidge wants to pretend he is. The air is crushed from their lungs as they hear the shake in his voice and his sticky inhale, but their body stays rooted, a scared young adult petrified with the salt of another’s sorrow.

“Are you angry with me?” he asks, as if he has something more to prove or explain, as if he’s ever done anything with malice. Pidge watches two ambitious tears cut lines down the face of the bravest person they know, branding it with liquid scars they can’t unsee. They watch him scrub them away like they don’t deserve their place there, like he should be ashamed. They can tell he’s more than ready to take all the blame for their shitty issues and actions over these past weeks if it means Pidge will look at him again. 

They think that this is perhaps the one thing he’s ever asked for in selfishness, and they can’t breathe, can’t figure out how to explain to this gentle person that his feelings aren’t wrong, that it isn’t him who should be apologising.

Because Pidge has driven themself insane recycling the thought that if they were still Katie, or a better, different girl, then the side effects of their self-discovery would disappear too. Their awkward femininity had begun withering before their quests into space ever did, and Katherine Holt died with the war, so Pidge isn’t a girl anymore, in any sense – they’re a paladin and a scientist and themself, above all. They know, logically, that that isn’t a issue, because it never has been. Not to themself, nor to their friends. Still, their team doesn’t know everything, and fear doesn’t listen to objective truths. They can’t let go of the idea that none of this would be a problem at all, if they took away the parts that made them Pidge and filled the surreptitious gaps with normalcy.

They don’t realize their body’s taken advantage of the stagnancy in their mind until they hear themself heaving a wet inhale, until Hunk is rushing towards them with wide eyes. He gathers them into the warmth of his arms, and they slouch forward like a rag doll and hate the way he feels like home. The plague of their feelings sticks like rot to their chest, and they worry it’ll tinge Hunk and make him sour too, and they heave, and heave, until their lungs are numb from the strain.

“I can’t do it,” they gasp, over and over, or maybe just once, “I can’t be that for you.”

“Okay, it’s okay,” Hunk agrees, repeating it like a broken lullaby, his arms creating sea walls to barricade their bleeding heart closed and brace back the tide of their tears. They still feel like they’re suffocating in their need for him to understand.

“I don’t do that, I can’t be that, I’m not a girl,” they babble, realizing as the words tumble out that their gender and their secrets aren’t really all that intrinsic to each other. But it’s easier to lump the two together, to define one as confusing and difficult and thereby disregard the other. Hunk has always been a humble man with simple desires, and Pidge feels like the most complex mess of a person he could aspire to, given the endless other options.

They know he isn’t getting it, isn’t understanding because they can’t force the damn words out like a normal person. They know that if they stood up and stopped crying then they could just tell him they don’t want to touch anyone like lovers do, and he has to look somewhere else for _someone_ else, because they can’t open their heart knowing it’s going to be demolished.

“I can’t let you down like that,” Pidge sobs, gripping around his shoulders in a hug so hard their nails dig divots into their arms. Their glasses have been shoved so far up their head that the nose pads are pulling their hair. The contact between them seems impossibly overdue. They feel a nose bury itself in their neck and give into the drowning, pushing wet kisses into the soft curls of his hair, mourning the few seconds they can pretend this is lasting, knowing the flood has to recede again.

But Hunk, Hunk grips them to his chest and stands on legs like tree trunks, draws them away from the tumultuous ocean and becomes his own steady planet. Their feet can’t touch the ground anymore, so they give into his gravity. He spins them in slow circles, melds into them like a key into a perfectly engineered lock, and repeats their name until it isn’t a word anymore. The dark room around them is a terrifying expanse of universe, but the warmth of his voice is a sun.

And when the tide goes out, they’re both still there.

Pidge presses their face into the smell of him, metallic and prickly like cinnamon. They decide that they want to hold their chest to his to feel his heart against their ribs more often. They give up their shitty game of pretend and face the facts before they face his eyes.

“Hunk,” they whisper, voice stronger than it should be, “I love you, and I can’t sleep with you. I don’t work that way.”

They wait for the earthquake, for the slow dissolving erosion to take them apart and place their feet back onto the solitary island they’ve crafted out for themself. He cradles them closer, instead, rocking them in his arms like a child.

“Pidge,” he says, “I know that.”

“That can’t be good enough,” they argue, and hold him tighter.

“I just want you. However you are.” The sensible thing would be to ask for explanations, ask how he’s figured them out with such sureness, ask why he hasn’t balked away or changed his mind or chosen anyone else in the unfathomable expanse of space they’ve seen or have yet to see. They choose instead to believe him wholeheartedly, details be damned. It’s Hunk, and they trust him more than anyone. His voice goes small, ridiculously small and shy, offering, “If that’s what you want too.”

And terror still says, “I don’t know.”

So Hunk says, “Take your time.”

Pidge has watched plenty of idiots fall in love – they know how the process is supposed to work, and they know they’ve done it wrong. Things settle back the way they were, despite the confessions of both parties. Hunk’s affectionate gestures don’t gain any extra connotation, and their team is no more wise to the secret Pidge has now granted dual user access to. Their antics together are as platonic as they’ve ever been, their debates on quantum mechanics just as banal. Except now, in the quiet rides back from space sector patrols, Pidge stares out the viewscreen at the yellow lion, and wonders.

There’s no great event that flips the switch, no near-death experience that suddenly drives them to act. The day isn’t even a remarkable one. Pidge can’t capture the proper dramatics of the stereotype, or find the inspiring jolt to take them running into another’s arms. They instead wander like they’re sleepwalking until they catch sight of the bright hue of his armour, and call his name just loud enough to echo. The few other cadets and paladins milling nearby don’t react, nor does his attention slow time or set the world aflame. Before them is the same view they’ve seen for close to a decade now, the exact imagery and sound they’ve had at their side since they rigged their way into the Garrison’s space program. It’s just Hunk, dark-skinned and handsome, looking worn from travel and windswept from the breeze.

But it occurs to the Green Paladin that perhaps there isn’t a huge cosmic sign to wait for that will prove this dive benign. They only have an entire universe to experience and a single lifetime to do it – Hunk might wait an eternity, but Pidge shouldn’t. 

When they careen into him he catches them with the ease of a home built to withstand generations of blows from the ocean. The clacking of their armour as they bend against each other sounds like perfection, and the surprise that bubbles up out of him in laughter might be the most beautiful thing they’ve ever heard. They reach up through the ridiculous difference of height between them and cup his jaw, enjoying the bristly texture of his skin and the heat building under their touch.

They know the first generation of team stupidity is somewhere nearby, and that there’s no escaping their inevitable ribbing and jokes. They know they’re going to embarrass themself with this unbridled PDA. They know that saying yes to Hunk means stepping off a ledge into a utterly terrifying future of unknowns. But when they glance up at his eyes there’s only safety looking back, so they yank him in and smush their lips together anyway.

Pidge opens their heart like a lovesick idiot, and seawater rushes in.


End file.
